The Exceptions

NELLA VITA—CHI NON

RISICA—NON ROSICA

(IN LIFE: WHO RISKS NOTHING,

GAINS NOTHING)





ONE


Of all the things that could strike us as we walk in, it’s not the smack of a sibling’s hand on a shoulder, not the lilting sound of my father’s soundtrack of Sinatra or Mario Lanza or Dino Crocetti (he refuses to call him Dean Martin), not the sound of loud voices bouncing off the scarred maple floors of the entryway; it’s the smell of the Sunday gravy. I would argue that Sylvia has some of the best chefs in Williamsburg, if not all of Brooklyn, yet our kitchen never captures a gastronomic aroma as powerful and warm as my father’s Sunday gravy, the veal- and pork-based red sauce that simmers all day long and serves as the base for most other dishes to be made. The scent asks you to come in and have a taste, grab a glass of wine, sit and tell it about your day. It has a comforting effect—one that might be working on Melody as well; she looks around the house like a child glimpsing a museum for the first time. Her eyes move from object to object, from the paintings on the wall to the pictures on the piano in the study. She catches a fleeting look at my father and mother in happier days, images of my brothers and me in younger, less intimidating stances and sizes.

We pause here in the entryway as I survey the scene; it appears everyone has congregated in the kitchen, as much a tradition as the meal itself. My mother could never “shake people out of her cooking space,” and eventually she and my father gave up, blew out the adjacent laundry room and increased the size of the kitchen by 30 percent.

I pull Melody down the hallway to the back of the house, her hand still cold, still trembling. As we break the fringe of the kitchen, a dozen or so people are milling about and various conversations are under way, the largest being where Peter stands before a small crowd of listeners. With his back to us, he says, “So I told him, ‘Hey, relax; you still got nine fingers. That’s nine more lessons!” Peter’s blatant copyright infringement of Tommy Fingers’s material brings a smattering of laughter, mostly from Gino’s and Jimmy’s wives, gazing adoringly at Peter with their heads cocked, wishing they’d somehow landed the dashing mafioso instead of the also-rans.

I slap Peter on the back and say, “Yeah, except what you really meant was he had seven fingers and two thumbs left, right?” The same response I used to give Tommy when I was a kid; if Pete can recycle old material, why can’t I?

He turns around and hugs me hard and fast, whacks me on the back. As I reach to return his hug, Melody is reluctant to release my hand. When I slide over, Melody slips right behind me like she’s hiding in my shadow, peeks her head around the side of my neck.

Everyone turns to look at me and Melody, and all of the conversations come to an abrupt end—except for the one occurring in the far corner of the kitchen between my father and Eddie Gravina, a manila folder positioned between them like they’re singing from the same hymnal. In my peripheral vision I can tell they’re staring at us. My father gets up from his chair slowly, grabs his pants by the belt, and pulls them way up to compensate for the down-drifting that’ll occur with each step toward us. He carries the manila folder with him.

I can feel Melody slink behind me again as my father comes our way. I wonder what’s running through her mind, wonder if she recognizes the now gray and overweight man who once acted the lead role in her night terrors. The only way this will work is if she faces him. The only way this will work is if he faces her.

No one says a word as Pop approaches us, not my three brothers, not the wives, not Eddie, not the extended crew.

Pop stops at the edge of the counter, leans on it with one hand, studies Melody. “Who’s this?”

I move to the side, expose Melody to the villainous crowd, as vulnerable and exposed as though she were standing naked. “This,” I say, “is my new girlfriend.”

Jimmy, mouth full of meatball sub, jabs Peter in the side. “Fibby bucks, tol’ you he wudn’t gah.” Fifty bucks. I told you he wasn’t gay. He takes another bite before swallowing.

“Those friggin’ glasses,” Peter says. “Had to go with the odds.” Peter finally gets the laughter and admiration he so desires. He steps toward Melody and smiles, says to her, “You’re way too pretty to be with this clown.” He offers his hand to her and as she weakly shakes it, he says, “Peter Bovaro.”

She swallows twice, can’t seem to get the lump down, can’t seem to get the words out, though eventually it escapes.

“Melody McCartney,” she says.

Peter smiles wider, releases her hand. You can count the seconds of silence—one, two, three—before everyone breaks into laughter.

Everyone except my father and Eddie Gravina.

I scan the room, the faces and expressions and levels of expectation.

My father squints at Melody, opens the manila folder again and studies its contents, closes it slowly and chucks it behind him on the counter.

Peter shoves me, says, “You friggin’—you thought you’d pull one over on us like that?”

“Good one, Johnny,” Gino yells from across the room, then gulps down the remaining contents of a Peroni.

“C’mon,” Peter says, “let’s go to your car. Show me the real one.”

Melody laughs a little, too, wipes her brow and looks at me.

“Stay put, Pete,” my father says, his eyes locked on Melody. I can tell she feels him studying her, can read the anxiety in the pallor of her face. Pop says to her quietly, “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

Silence again.

Melody looks at me, her expression pleading for another rescue attempt. I can hear the whisper: Are you sure?

“My name is, uh…” she says.

I purse my lips and slowly nod.

She takes in a deep breath, her eyes bouncing from face to face across the room, landing on mine last. She lets out the breath, slouches her shoulders, puts all her weight on one leg.

“My name is Melody Grace McCartney.” She pauses, watches the faces before her contort into expressions of confusion. “I’m exactly who you think I am.”

More laughter—but now from only one: my father.

I move between Melody and Pop. “Yeah, this is Melody Grace McCartney,” I say, making sure everyone can hear me.

She’s just a little girl.

She is six years old.

She’s a scared child.

How could she hurt you?

I say, “She’s not a kid anymore, but just as innocent. Surprised she managed to live this long?”

“That’s enough, Johnny,” my father says. He rubs his eyes, leans his lower back against the counter; the cabinets underneath it creak. “Have you lost your friggin’ mind?”

Then Peter: “What the hell have you done, Johnny?”

“I haven’t done anything but fallen for an amazing woman.” My eyes still on Peter, I sense Melody quickly turn and stare at me; I hadn’t intended on her knowing how I truly felt about her, figured my feelings were safely encrypted in whispered Italian she could never translate. I didn’t want her to have anything in her mind that might prevent her from discarding me, but even though she shouldn’t have known the truth, my family needed to. She moves closer.

Peter chuckles. His volume increases with every sentence: “Oh, so, wait—you really did bring your girlfriend home? Very cute. Did she ride in the trunk, too? A hundred million available women and you pick one that wants to take us all down? Are you and I even distantly related?”

Melody turns to my father, seems determined to take her case directly to the highest court. “All I know is I adore your son, Mr. Bovaro.”

Now it’s my turn to be caught off guard. I’m weakened by her speaking those words, that my love for her might not be unrequited. And now my hope is that this toppled apple cart self-corrects, that somehow it will work—that we will work. I hope and pray her words are true. I hope and pray she’s not just acting.

My father catches my eye, has the same look on his face as the moment I suggested we keep Morrison alive, the look that can only be read as you are a dreamer. And like that day so long ago, I hope now that my sense of hope and purpose are as welcome as the peace and calm my mother once brought to him, that he needs this balance.

But then he slowly shakes his head. His expression changes to that of complete and utter disappointment, that maybe he shouldn’t have trusted me all those years ago with Morrison either.

“You’re a good liar, young lady,” he says, but the words are meant for me; he might as well have said, “She lied to you, Johnny.”

Melody cocks her head a little and stands taller, says very carefully, “I’m not lying.”

I slip my arm around her back and pull her next to me. “She’s telling the truth, Pop. You think I’d bring her here if I wasn’t convinced she’d never hurt us? She just wants a real chance at a normal life, her life.” Then, as though it will add some level of comfort for my family, some assurance that she’ll remain closemouthed, I add, “With me.”

Pop sighs, says, “I believe the part about her wanting a normal life, but not the part about it being with you. She has every reason to want us to pay for what we did to her, and she’s played you in getting sweet revenge.” He turns his body so he’s square with Melody and says, “And I’ll tell you, kid, you’re tough”—he slams his pointer finger down on the counter—“for coming into my house and thinking you could pull this off.”

Melody and I reply with mirrored frowns and words: “Pull what off?”

“Pop,” I say, “look, I don’t need you to teach me a lesson here, okay? I’m a grown man and I know what I’m doing. I—”

Now the fist hits the counter. “This isn’t about teachin’ a lesson, Johnny; it’s about serving life in prison. I’m an old man. I’m not letting things end that way. And you’ve got to think about your family, your brothers and their wives and their children.”

I shake my head, conjure a way to start over. “Melody’s not going to—”

“Melody’s not going to what, Johnny?” He snatches up the remote and aims it at the stereo like he wants to kill it. The music ends and he chucks the remote so hard against the wall the plastic cracks and the batteries fall out. He runs his hands through his wiry silver hair, wipes his face, crosses his arms. “Why don’t you ask the love of your life what she did yesterday.”

I answer with annoyance. “I know exactly what she did yesterday.”

“Yeah?”

“Spent the day in the spa at our hotel in Baltimore.”

“Yeah?”

“I got five women who’ll testify to that.”

“Well, I got something better than your five women.” Pop turns sideways and snaps his fingers. Gravina slides the manila folder back down the counter. My father empties the contents into his hands, slams a stack of photos against my chest, bends half of them in the process.

My father and I do not take our eyes from each other. I slowly reach up to accept the pictures and he backs up. Melody glides to my side, puts a nervous hand on my shoulder, peeks over to see what I’m holding. No one says a word as my eyes fall to the first image.

The picture is underexposed, yet the subject unmistakable: Melody in the arms of Sean, her head resting against his chest, the backdrop the front end of a black vehicle parked along an empty cornfield, the corner of an old red-painted church sticking its nose into the frame of the image. From seeing her this way, I’m tossed about by a wave of blended disappointment, jealousy, and rivalry, though it’s not cause for concern; I saw them in a similar situation the night I followed her to Cape Charles, as she and Sean stood outside the doors to their motel rooms. But then the room spins, tosses me into a vortex of real disorientation as I make an observation—and Melody must make the same observation in the same instant, for her hand drops from my shoulder: In the picture, her hair is already cut and styled from the spa, and she’s wearing the clothes I purchased for her.

This picture was taken less than twenty-four hours ago.

Eddie moves up next to my father and says, “Your girlfriend spent the day cooking up a serious deal with the feds. They took her to some operations center and apparently offered her the deal of her life. Any town, any job, any money. Isn’t that right, dear?”

I turn to Melody and she stares up at me, head shaking, mouth ajar, eyes filling. “Please, no, Jonathan.”

I’m looking at her but remembering Peter’s words to me on our last phone call, the relief I felt when Tommy left the Baltimore area: Whatever Tommy Fingers was trying to get or locate was achieved—not exactly sure what it is but Eddie Gravina’s anxious for Pop to have it—and he’s now on his way back to New York.

Peter chimes in: “Geez, Johnny, please tell me you did not discuss what this family does. Did she ask you about our family? Did she ask you to cough up information about our personal business?”

My memory serves up every instance where she probed me for information about my family; the recollections drift and stop in front of me like I’m being dealt a hand of cards. Though most obvious, her simple command—“Tell me the worst thing you can tell me”—was a demand I met with such ease, an offering surrendered with a harmony of heart and mind. I gave her everything she wanted. Worst of all: As I stare at her now, I have no choice but admit I was powerless all along, that no matter how I might rewrite this story, it would always end the same.

“No, Jonathan,” Melody pleads, “this isn’t right. They’re not right.”

But the pictures cannot be denied, their proof as convincing as a bloody shoeprint. Melody reaches up to try and claim my hand, tries to gain my attention, but my eyes are locked on the image again. I drop the picture to the floor, look at the next one: Melody in Sean’s arms, looking up at his face. Drop. Melody and Sean getting out of the black vehicle. Drop. “Souvenir,” I whisper. Melody being escorted into a larger black vehicle. Drop. “That was how you knew what a souvenir was.” The vehicle disappearing down an empty, dusty road. Drop.

I feel the collective weight of my family’s shame bearing down on me; I can barely breathe, yet the only regret I have is that Melody had not been genuine with me. I wanted her love so badly I would have lied to myself, to everyone, to get it. Turns out I lied in spite of it.

“Oh, God, Jonathan, no,” Melody says. “No. I didn’t make any deal! I—”

“How did you pull this off?” I ask. “I thought you were at the spa.” She becomes a blur as my eyes fill with tears. “I thought you were waiting for me.”

Her voice shakes. “I was. I was. They came and found me and took me to some place called Safesite. I was only gone for a couple hours. They wanted me to play you, they did, but I told them I wouldn’t do it!”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

Her head shakes like she’s nervous, like she’s saying no. It takes her too long to answer, and when she does: “I don’t know.”

Pop laughs so loud it startles me, turns to my family, and says, “She doesn’t know! She’s quick, this one.” Nervous smiles fill the room. He turns to Melody and says, “What you mean to say is you tricked my son into thinking you were at a spa all day, managed to sneak out with some federal agents for a bit, then slipped back in before he ever knew you were gone. And this didn’t seem shifty to you?”

Melody looks across the range of faces in the kitchen, gets a glimpse of her tenuous future from each and every one, different scenarios that all arrive at the same denouement. Her eyes land on my face last; they’re wet and red and dim with exhaustion. She shrugs and says softly, “I just… I—I don’t know why I didn’t say anything, Jonathan. We were living minute to minute and I didn’t…”

I toss the remaining pictures—all unviewed—on the floor; Peter bends down and picks them up, starts flipping through them and comparing each image to Melody, passes them along to the rest of the crowd.

I can’t convince myself that Melody had been disingenuous, that my interpretations of her words, of her touch, were anything but real. I don’t believe the way she kissed me and held me and looked at me were false; the intimacy between us that felt so practiced was anything but manifest. Yet my father is right: Her hatred for my family has to have been so severe that she could’ve acted her way through this, a performer taught to lie and deceive her entire life by the government, professionals whose careers are dedicated to the livelihood of people just like Melody.

I step back, lean against the wall. I got nothing. I am nowhere. I pray God helps me understand, to make sense of it all, to know.

Put it together. C’mon, map this out. What’s going on here?

Peter shakes his head, impales the silence with profuse profanity.

My father wipes his face over and over. Each guy in our crew groans as he fumbles with the pictures.

My father says, “All the days of planning, all the sleepless nights rife with worry, everything we did this week, every action perfectly executed, right to this moment we should be celebrating—and my own son takes everything and flushes it right down the frigging toilet.”

The fact that my father made that statement in front of Melody means there’s absolutely no chance of her seeing another sunset. She’s as good as buried.

C’mon. Map it out. What’s happening?

Melody grabs my arm, sinks her nails into it. Her crying becomes audible, her body jerks as she begins to plead: “Jonathan, please—I love you. I do.” My eyes fill again and I look down so no one can tell; whether her words are true or not, I want to believe them. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you. I just want us to be happy.” When I do not drop my arm for her, she slowly pulls her hand away and wipes her eyes. She steps toward my family and yells, “You freaking people. I hate your frigging guts, every single one of you, can’t believe for a second I wanted your approval. All I ask is that you forgive me for making a mistake, for even talking to those pricks at Justice. Forgive me, okay? Yes, they’d been watching me and could tell I was getting close to Jonathan, and they promised me the moon if I’d try to get information from him, to trick him. It didn’t matter because I told them to screw off. I never told Jonathan about meeting with them and I am sorry. I don’t want to hurt any of you. Please, just forgive me!”

C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. Figure it out. God, please.

Melody drops to her knees and sits on her feet, becomes hysterical. “I mean, I forgive you for having murdered my parents, for ruining my entire life, for making me this wreck you see before you. Can’t you please, please, give me one more chance? I just want one chance!”

I narrow my eyes, study every face in the room. My father’s angry scowl is aimed at Melody; Peter looks at me, shaking his head the entire time; Gino and Jimmy and the rest of the crew look at me then close their eyes and turn away; the wives look at me with saddened eyes, mouth the words, “Oh, Johnny.”

But when my gaze lands on Eddie, he catches my stare for only a second before he quickly drops his eyes and looks down. I feel a heat rise up through my chest. I keep my eyes locked on him, will stay like this all day if I have to. He looks up, his eyes taking the long way around the room before he catches me staring at him, then drops his face again, fast.

“Please,” Melody begs one more time, “I promise I’ll never hurt any of you.”

Peter hands over the last picture to Gino, takes a step forward and says, “That sounds like the plea of a woman facing certain death.”

My father waves his hand downward a few times, sends a signal for Pete to relax.

I can’t stop looking at Eddie. He makes one final attempt to lift his head, but now he’s unable to look me in the eye at all.

Then the projections come into focus: Gardner could’ve never supplied this information to anyone in my family. Being the whiner he is, I’d have been made fully aware if more than one Bovaro was requesting information of him. Though more importantly, I know Gardner didn’t have access to this particular kind of data—“no file information, just addresses”—so the insider information was being supplied from another source. Gravina is somehow involved, and the fact that he can’t look at me implies the story is more complex than anyone here comprehends; I’ve known Eddie for years, and if he were simply reporting evidence, he’d have the same look on his face as the rest of my family. Some deeper betrayal exists that I do not yet understand.

The amount of adrenaline running through my veins makes it nearly impossible to keep from outing Gravina right now, forcing him into a corner to make him play his hand, to get to the real details behind how he’d know where Melody was and why no one thought to mention it to me prior to this moment. I’d volunteer to help my brothers dig the hole that would soon house him—but the outcome would not change Melody’s own future: dead and buried right next to Eddie.

I promised Melody I would keep her safe, that I would do whatever needs to be done to protect her. To keep that promise, there’s only one play I can make, only one that matters: Get Melody out of this house. Now.

Melody looks up, holds her breath, fights the tears.

My father glances at Peter, walks to the stockpot on the stove, gives his sauce a stir with a wooden spoon. Then, to no one in particular, “Take care of her.”

Peter steps up to bat, but Melody tips my way and grabs my leg and looks up at me, tells me she loves me like it’s the last thing she might ever say, uses her final words to assure me that no matter what this looks like, her feelings were genuine, that she wants me to know it was all true. I give Gravina one final glance, and with him still looking away, his line of vision ending at his shoelaces, I believe Melody.

I will never doubt her again.

Pop puts the lid back on the gravy. “Take care of it, Johnny, okay? Enough is enough. We’ve let you play this game for years.” He walks my way, says in a tone that none of us would mistake for anything but genuine sincerity, “No more.” As Melody clings to my leg, I hope somehow he sees the little girl, the child I brought home for them to meet. How could he look at this innocent woman and want her dead? How does someone’s sense of humanity devolve this far? I pray he sees it, understands, and agrees. He looks down at Melody, watches her breathe hard against my leg and suffer at our hand one final time, sees her get to live the nightmare from which she spent a lifetime running. And as he tilts his head and stares at her, for a few seconds I think he might see it, he might understand what I was trying to do, he might see the virtue, the beauty, the perfection in who she is. But then his expression turns to one of slight contentment, and my last thread of hope falls from the frayed end, drifts through the air, and vanishes. He turns to me and stares me down and says, “Put. A bullet. In the bitch.”

Though I hear the words, I cannot fathom them, cannot comprehend how he could ask this of me. He has created a finality, has officially calcified my softer life of tiptoeing around the darker crimes and keeping away from the blood spatter. His words are the mortar binding the bricks in the new wall between us. I am no longer one of them, no longer know who they are. I am a stranger in my own home.

I wipe the moisture from my eyes, know that if I display the slightest hesitation, that if I do not play the part of an infuriated, determined killer, she will be put to rest by a more seasoned member of our crew. So I must become the actor, must hurt Melody in a way that convinces not only my family, but her as well.

And now the most difficult moment of my life: As Melody looks up at me with her tear-soaked face and says, “Please, Jonathan, I love you,” I reach down and grab her arm and twist it, yank her up to her feet, then slam her against the wall. She squeaks as her back hits the edge of the doorframe. I feel like I’m going to vomit as she crumples to the floor and covers her face, overwhelmed by how many times she’s been failed in this life, how she interprets my betrayal now as one more failure. As I lift her back up only to slam her into the corner of the room, I have to tell myself I am saving her life.

“Come here,” I say, as I grunt and grab her by her other arm and haul her to the door. She lets her body fall limp, feels like I’m dragging her already dead body. My family watches the spectacle like a boring rerun. My objective is that they view my actions as determination, though the people I need to convince most are my father and Peter. As far as Gravina goes, I’ll one day release the pressure from my newfound self-discipline and self-control upon him, make it last for hours.

I open the front door of the Tudor so fast and hard it slams against an antique coat rack, sends it to the floor in slow motion. I yank Melody to the Audi; she stumbles and falls the entire way. I open the passenger door and shove her inside, run around and hop in, lock the doors.

As I start the engine, I say, “Geez, Melody, I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

I back out of the driveway, whip the car around in the middle of the road, and fly down the neighborhood streets at twice the speed as when we drove in. Melody rubs her shoulder, tries to collect her thoughts.

“I’m so sorry, Melody.” I ignore all the stop signs, pass idle cars. “Are you all right?”

She turns and looks at me, holds on to the door grip with all her strength, wipes the moisture from her face with her other hand. “I’m okay, I… think. Wait, you’re… you’re not mad?”

I wave my hand at her. “Look, here’s what we’re up against: If I didn’t convincingly act out the part of the livid mafioso back there, they’re going to send someone after us, make sure I close the deal.”

“Kill me?”

“Yes. I don’t have the greatest track record, if you recall. And being the guy who thought it was a clever idea to keep Morrison alive, they aren’t going to let this slide unless I really appeared like I was going to take you out.”

She swallows, hard. “But you’re not going to kill me?”

Despite our need for escape, I turn and look at her, pull my foot off the gas. “Melody, it’s hard to admit, but I love you. And I promised I would never hurt you—never. Do you remember? I promised you that when we first met.”

“Yeah,” she says, rubbing her shoulder again as if to imply, Well, this kinda hurt. She smiles and says, “But that was only, like, three days ago.”

I turn back to the road and accelerate. “Yeah, well, it’s a promise I’ve been keeping for twenty years.”

She stops rubbing her wounds, stares at me.

“Look,” I say, “I don’t know how or why you met with the feds or how you managed to get to their operations center, but I know in my heart you love me.” She doesn’t respond. “Right?”

She reaches over and touches my knee, and as she is about to say something, I catch a glimpse of a familiar shape in my rearview mirror. I shake my head and say, “Predictable.”

“What?”

“Guess I’m not taking home the Oscar. It’s Peter.”

If my father’s insistence that I take Melody’s life was mortar between the bricks, Peter’s tailing us is the wall’s capstone. Their reluctant tolerance of my defiance over the years, my loose rebellion and incapacity to conform to the full Bovaro stature, has come to a close. Only time will tell if they’ve lost their love for me, but for these it is now too late: They have lost their faith, and they have lost their trust.

Everyone has made their choice.

I know what was running through my father’s mind: We’ve come too far, worked too hard to get through this nightmare to have one loose end get pulled and start the unraveling process. Peter begins closing in, speeds up the road in his massive black Chevy.

“I’m never gonna outrun him with that monster engine he’s got.” Melody turns around, watches the black mass fast approaching. “Though we do have one advantage.” I check my rearview again, see him whip around a Honda, the body of his car tipping as he sweeps back into our lane. “We can outmaneuver him.”

I quickly turn down a side road, drop the car from sixth to fourth and begin passing cars, take turns at speeds I know Peter could never replicate, would have him flipping the massive sedan off the street and into some suburban front yard.

Melody grips the door with both hands as we cross over a series of small hills, become airborne with each crest. Peter begins to fade as he slows on the turns behind us, pulls to the left each time he comes over a hill.

Peter and I both know these side roads well, have traveled them countless times, can anticipate every twist and turn, every unfilled pothole and blind corner—which means he knows where I’m heading: the Palisades Parkway.

As we hit a mile-long stretch of bends closely lined by century-old oaks, he’s all but vanished.

By the time I get to the Palisades, he can’t be seen. I drive so far above the speed limit that we’re passing cars like they’re static randomly broken-down objects in the lanes of the freeway. I care not about the other motorists, about cops, about careening across three lanes at a time; I care only about escape.

We get right back off the Palisades, hop on the New Jersey Turnpike driving south. Peter has disappeared; we’ve officially lost him.

We slow to the speed of traffic, about seventy, and try to merge into the masses, to blend. I stare ahead and begin trying to formulate a plan.

“Now what?” Melody asks.

I keep driving, keep staring: This is the exact reason emotion had no business influencing the course of her rescue plan.

“Now what?” she tries again.

“Why do you love me?” I ask.

She turns my way, studies me. “What do you mean? There’s no reason, I—”

“No.” I stare at the speedometer, watch the arm of the dial move counterclockwise as we slow. “You love me because I gave you freedom, Melody.” I look in her direction, wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “I freed you from the chains and locks that have held you down your whole life. That’s the only reason, because I gave you freedom.” The dial steadies. “And it’s okay.”

She touches my leg. “That’s not true. I love you because of who you are, the man you—I mean, look, because of what you’re doing right now. You don’t think I see what you’re all about? You’re risking everything for me.” She squeezes my thigh, casually trumps me: “I will never doubt your love for me.”

I have to get her to safety, have to throw together a plan—fast. I can’t just return her to the Witness Protection Program, to the nationwide waiting room of death. “Oh… what are we gonna do?” I accidentally say loud enough for her to hear.

As our speed holds at sixty, she calms, leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “If we got married I couldn’t testify against you.”

I laugh. “That’s cute in a naïve way. The feds would be watching us twenty-four hours a day—welcome to my world. And you’d still be able to testify against my family, which would guarantee a bullet.”

I’m jammed up trying to understand how to sustain her newfound freedom. Everything’s gone wrong. I don’t see any more options left. The party’s over. And we’re the last to leave.

I quickly pull into the slow lane and exit the turnpike, wind us onto a side street and up against a curb. I take the car out of gear and pull up the emergency brake, turn to Melody. Her eyes are so full of hope, she wants me to deliver the next play to the offensive coach, pull us up from a fourteen-point deficit. Unfortunately, the clock has only five seconds remaining, and this is our last time-out.

I take in a slow breath, and in the exhale I say, “We just played the only hand we had, Melody. It’s over.”

She shakes her head. “What do you mean? What’s over?”

“This. Us. It’s over.”

Her lips quiver; she purses them to keep me from seeing. “Over? It just started. I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you see? You had two days of freedom and you became a new woman—the woman you should’ve been all along. Don’t forget I’ve been watching you your whole life, Melody, and I saw the change, I know it was there. You’re about to lose it all again.”

She wipes tears away before they have a chance to run down her cheek. “We could get married,” she offers again.

“You know we can’t. No one will ever leave us alone. The feds. My family. Everyone will be hunting us down. There won’t be a single day that passes where you won’t wonder if your car’s gonna blow or I’ve been murdered.”

She reaches for my hand, lets the tears fall now, says more earnestly, “Then let’s just run away together. Trust me, we can run. No one will ever find us. I feel safer with you than the feds.”

I reach over and caress the back of her head and neck with my hand. “Melody, you’ve been running for over two decades, and you had professionals helping you. How long before they find you—us—again?”

“Then we can both go into Witness Protection together. You can testify against your family and—”

“Melody,” I say, pulling her to my chest, “it’s over.” I hold her tight, rock slightly as she cries. I stop praying for her and I to have a life together, begin praying I can simply find a way to rescue her, get her out of here and set her free. “Don’t you see? If I go into Witness Protection with you it’ll be even worse than before, with more lies, with an even bigger threat of getting killed. Double the risk. It’ll never end, Melody. You’ll never be free.”

And what of testifying against my family? Where and how would it begin? That type of ordeal could never be contrived. I know the price for betrayal in my family, have helped force people to pay it; survival is not included in the fee.

Yet how one-sided it truly is. My family betrayed me, asked me to surrender a woman I not only wanted to protect, but claimed to have loved. Except business always comes first—over love, over family, over anything; sacrifice, remember, is poorly practiced within the Bovaro family circle. Were I to testify, where would the line be drawn? Behind me, with an arrow at the end pointing to a chalk outline.

As I hold Melody I get grainy glimpses of myself in Witness Protection, imagine the joy Gardner would get knowing where I was, how I’d fallen prostrate to the very program I spent years undermining. How Randall would so easily hand over my whereabouts to my family, exchange my address for a credit against losses incurred at the hands of the Vikings or the Lakers or the Red Sox. How he’d routinely check for any updated information on Melody and put that on the offering plate as well. Now she is forever doomed. My inside source just became the assurance she’d never be safe in the program again. I can’t shake the image of Gardner having the most satisfying revenge against me, how quickly he’d return to pornographically capturing and selling his wife, gambling his salary right into my family’s communal fist while I rot in a program with walls nowhere near high enough to protect me. My imagination takes me to the farthest edge of survival, how if I had to spend one second in the program, the first thing I’d have to do is out Gardner, serve him up to Justice on a platter with a frigging apple in his mouth. Oh, the repercussions of doing such a thing.

Of course: the repercussions.

This time God didn’t make me wait, laid relief upon me like the hot sun upon Noah’s saturated face.

I get the answer—and I get the answer.

I’m a chess player, envision the path of moves that will lead me directly to checkmate; my opponent could never see it coming.

Melody says something, her words muffled as she speaks them against my chest.

“Wait,” I say, “hold on.” Everything comes together, like a lifetime of research culminating into great discovery, a cure for the hopelessly diseased.

As the concept gets launched skyward like a firework, I follow it in my mind until it explodes, watch each sparking strand of potential outcome until every instance fizzles out completely, make sure not a single piece of hot ash hits the ground and causes a fire. I replay it again.

“What can we do,” I think she says.

“Hold on.”

Then again: The play unfolds. Like standing at home plate, I see every face from the opposing team watching my stance, trying to determine where and how I’m going to swing. But we’ve got men on base already. As much as I’d love to smack one out into the parking lot, I know the right thing to do is get my teammates home safe, to get them over the plate and raise the score. What choice do I really have? I’m going to have to sacrifice myself. I’m never going to make it to first base. Here comes the squeeze play.

I am going to rescue everyone—except Jonathan Bovaro.